Resaw Rocking Horse Rockers W/Pics

[Jim Dunn]

Well I laid out the rocking horse on a sheet of plywood and didn't like the looks of the rockers that were suggested:eek:. So I thought I'd make a set of rockers that fit my needs and sizes a little bit more.

In the first picture is the layout, 2nd is the bending fixture for the 40" radius. In the third picture I'm re-sawing the soft maple. Each piece is 5/16 and planed to 1/4 finish dimension. 4th pic is of the re-sawn pieces. I cut 7 but found that I only needed 5. The last pic is of the glue-up. Needed 23 clamps for this, most I've ever used at one time on the same project:D Darn, I had to buy two more clamps and a gallon of glue just for this job;):rolleyes:

I'll add to this thread and show how I used winding sticks to align the legs of the horse and to keep the rest of the saga going.

[Mark Stutz]

Looks good, Jim. You know, you could have come up the road and borrowed a couple:D I've never done any bending...now I'll know where to come for help.

Mark

[Tom Sontag]

Okay, the extra clamps for this I understand, but a GALLON of glue??!! Jeepers Jim, let's discuss squeeze-out.

Looks to me like you'll be cutting the glueup into two rockers? Or four?

[Jim Dunn]

Mark, thanks for the offer of the clamps and as to the bending. Seemed to me I'd seen Norm bend some wood like this when he was making a catapult to send cats into Minnesota:eek:

Tom I am making 2 rockers. As to the squeeze out, there was none. Soaked both sides liberally with glue and still didn't have any mess.:D If you need to fill a glue bottle come on over and I fill ya up.

[Jim Dunn]

A couple of more pics. I hope to get this done this weekend. It's been a long haul as I had to re-engineer the thing user larger/thicker pieces and make the rocker stand.

I also added a picture of LOML as she is the finishing/coloring expert here abouts:o I wanted to paint the rocker assy. black but she over-road me;):rolleyes::D

[Jim Dunn]

The legs are supposed to align each other by using the print I bought. I found that as they are about 24" long I needed a better way of aligning them. What to use, what to use:confused: Ah, I remembered a picture/post about making a work top flat using winding sticks. Perfect solution! I did have a little trouble finding the right color of sticks as using just one color and they tend to blend into each other. I think it worked pretty good:) Horsey didn't "rock" on the bench top.